Virtual Deontology:
Access to Network Resources
Irina Trushina
National Library of Russia
Can universal and free access to information be considered an absolute public good? This problem is not as clear as it seems, though now the right of free access to information has been recognized in many democratic countries.
The matters of censorship and freedom of speech have been widely discussed at a the level of intergovernmental institutions as well as of international public and professional organizations during the last few years. A report of Prof. Paul Sturges «Freedom of Expression and Information Communication Networks» has been submitted to the 17th Meeting of the Council for Cultural Cooperation of Cultural Committee of the Council of Europe (Strasbourg, October, 1998). On the same year the European Parliament adopted a «Resolution on the Role of Libraries in Modern Societies» which stated a necessity «to organize and guarantee free access to information for the citizen»…«whereas the possession and mastery of information promote economic, social and cultural integration» (Item A).
The IFLA Committee for Free Access to Information and Freedom of Expression in its «Statement on Libraries and Intellectual Freedom» (1999) expressed its devotion to the freedom of speech concept by declaring that «human beings have a fundamental right to access to expressions of knowledge, creative thought and intellectual activity, and to express their views publicly». This document «calls upon libraries and library staff to adhere to the principles of intellectual freedom, uninhibited access to information and freedom of expression and to recognize the privacy of library user». Professional communities recommend that even the smallest public library should have access to network resources.
Freedom of access to information, freedom of speech and freedom of expression proclaimed by «Declaration of Human Rights » (Article 19) are among the natural and fundamental human rights. However, historically censorship and freedom of speech have been co-existing. From the beginning of the modern civilization there goes a constant struggle between the authorities and the people, with the latter striving to be independent, to champion scientific truth, to express their own views and evaluations and to criticize governmental policy. At various stages of social development the censorship has been executed by the church, the monarchy, by other state institutions. It looked like the situation had changed after the establishment of European and American democracies. But in modern world various forms of censorship can be exercised by public groups, such as political parties, religious groups, women's liberation organizations etc. and sometimes they do it more vociferously and inventively than any government. At the same time democratic states have long tradition of respect for the human rights, so any attempts to restrict these rights invariably face protest campaigns of the citizens. Any bills on the subject are usually widely discussed in public before their acceptance.
The advent of the Internet with its anarchic structure has aggravated the problems of censorship and launched them to a new orbit. But the idea of an unlimited and unrestricted access to the chaos of Web-contents is just an illusion. Apparently there is a censorship in the Net which means that nowadays a big portion of information received via the World Web can be incomplete, because it passes various filtering and blocking systems on its way to the end-user. Not all Web-content is acceptable for a certain public group, the latter being very good in imposing its views. Innovations of means of communication go hand in hand with development of special software which react to certain words and images or analyzes accompanying information in identifying web-resources, and eventually can block them.
What are the reasons and prerequisites of the Net censorship? Blocking systems and filtering systems (such as «Internet Cyber Patrol», «Cyber Sitter», «Net Nanny», «Smart Filter», «Surfwatch») have been created as a response to various public concerns. One of the leading experts in this area Paul Sturges in his report «Freedom of Expression and Information Communication Networks» classifies these concerns in the following way: breach of national security or threats to the safety of international corporations due to hackers’ activities; dissemination of information of explicit sexual contents; violation of intellectual property rights; use of the Internet by political fringe and extremist groups for spreading their ideology; availability or distribution of hazardous information about weapons, drugs etc[1]. Such a list can have no end (for example, it is indisputably hazardous for the minors to be exposed to the images of child pornography, or to descriptions of perverted suicidal techniques), but it will always reflect an ideology of a certain public group or community. Public morality and in most cases the legislator will invariably regard distribution of harmful contents in the Internet as an absolute evil.
There were several attempts of various governments to regulate access to controversial material in the Internet. In 1995 the Communication Decency Act (CDA) was introduced in the USA. The Act criminalized obscene material sent through electronic networks and provided for fines of up to $10,000 and imprisonment of up to two years. Specifically, it prohibited knowingly using 'an interactive computer service' either to 'send', or to 'display', any 'patently offensive' material to a person under 18. It was passed on February 1st 1996 and signed into law by President Clinton on February 8th. On the same day a group of organizations led by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU called the Citizens Internet Empowerment Coalition (CIEC), filed a lawsuit challenging CDA constitutionality.The Supreme Court ruled the CDA unconstitutional under the provisions of the First Amendment to the US Constitution. Speaking about relativity in approaching the matters of freedom of speech one must mention that the First Amendment has been violated many times in the USA after terrorist attacks.
The failure of Communication Decency Act has not eliminated the problem of legislative regulation of the digital contents. Another approach to the challenge of offensive and controversial Internet materials involves the use of filtering systems (or recommendation systems) as well as labeling and rating.
Filtering and rating systems come along with the tendency to assign metadata (i.e. the data which briefly describe and evaluate the contents) to the majority of information sources to improve their availability. There are such types of filtering as «filtering for recommendation», which implies assisting the user to select an information source, and «filtering for blocking». When a blocking programs is applied by a provider of information services, it usually excludes sites with keywords and graphics images, carrying a certain meaning. But the methods used are sometimes so crude that valuable materials often are blocked as well.
Application of rating categories to resources is done by various agencies which grade materials as well as evaluate them with the help of rating systems, or by the authors/distributors of the site. That means that the authors of the site compare it with a certain set of criteria. For example, developed by campaign specialized on entertaining computer programs RSAC, system RSACi estimates a material from the point of contents on a scale from 0 up to 4 on four categories: violence, the image of a naked body, sex and language.
There are two opposite views on the possibility of the legal regulation of the Net. The first one is a romantic view on cyberspace as an absolutely independent and self-sufficient realm, where no government can rule. The second one has been expressed by a British lawyer Graham Smith: «The suggestion that the Internet has no law is born of wishful thinking more than of cogitation. Local laws of each jurisdiction do apply to activities conducted using the Internet».
Reaction to occurrence of blocking systems in the Internet became occurrence of the whole layer of the network associations opposing censorship in the Internet. The largest organization in the given area is «Global Internet Liberty Campaign», ( which unites 45 organisations.Among its members: «American Civil Liberties Union», «Electronic Privacy International Center», «Human Rights Watch», «Internet Society», «Privacy International» and so on.
One more network union — «Reporters sans frontiers» ( opposing any restriction of access to web-resources. They suppose, that: «no country can truly control the Internet, but the technological race that pits the "enemies of the Internet" against those fighting for freedom is permanent. The outcome of this technical guerilla war is still undecided» ( list of «The enemies of Internet» was situated on Now it is including 59 countries. The factof the including there Russia makes us seriously think on it.
But whether the universal accessibility of the Global Net is a benefit? It is well known that the truth is always circumstantial. An approach to this complex ethical dilemma depends on a particular situation. What will be your attitude to the possibility of your kid being exposed to child pornography in the Net? The Peacefire network project which protect the children’s rights of access to information has developed a program which can break porno-excluding filters. Does such a program really help the children? Or is the filtering in institutions and companies, which provide access to their employers, good or bad? For example, the National Library of Russia web-resources are filtered by a proxy-server which blocks sites from the «black list» or eliminate material with certain keywords. It is done by a system administrator, who justifies the choice of filter by the fact that the traffic at a gateway to a porno-site can be so intense, that it hinder other employees in their work. In this case an absolutely freedom of access can violate the rights of others. In the majority of countries it is considered appropriate for the managers of institutions and companies to limit access to the Internet by job responsibilities of the employees, similar to the use of an office telephone.
When dealing with illegal or harmful contents while providing access to the Internet in public libraries, a librarian has become a PAP (Public Access Point) manager – as the European Community declared in its recommendations - and shall be responsible for granting public access to the Internet on the basis of professional principles. Such «professional principles provide broad guidance as to how the manager should act, but they need interpretation if they are to be of use in specific cases». It means, that any code of practice set certain limits on the PAP managers’ activities but does not take from him or her the obligation of independent decision-making. Therefore «an institutional policy on Internet access is needed, so as to guide the manager and to indicate to users the parameters within which access is provided».[2]
The problem of free access to the Internet is rather complex from the ethical point of view and demands a careful and balanced approach. Now the professionals in the field of information and library services must take an active part in the running debate on matters of accessibility of the Global Net in order to protect their professional principles and values.
The problem of censorship has never ceased, but the Internet coming into the world has given it new challenges and a new urgency. Prior to the epoch of digital communications censorship was carries out openly - at least in the democratic countries. Technical features of the Internet allow anonymity of censorship: sometimes a user is absolutely ignorant of the identity of filtering or blocking agents. In this sense the Internet gives great opportunities for total control, and is infrequently compared with a totalitarian regime.
The majority of problems, stated in this report, have not yet received any straightforward legal solution, which brings them more to the sphere of ethics. And here we are in need of a highly specialized ethics of cyberspace, a virtual deontology.
1
[1] Report «Freedom of expression and information communication networks» by Paul Sturges, submitted at the 17th Meeting of the Council for Cultural Cooperation of the Committee for Culture of the Council of Europe (Strasbourg, October, 1998)
[2] Sturges P.Internet, Freedom of Expression and Public Access Points//Censorship in Russia. History and Modern Time. Vol.1. —Saint-Petersburg: National Library of Russia, 2001. —P.248.